One or more CPE (customer premise equipment) devices such as set-top boxes (STB), multimedia gateways, multimedia clients, televisions, and others may be installed within a subscriber premise. For example, a subscriber premise may include one or more CPE devices in one or more rooms of the subscriber premise. Each of the CPE devices within a subscriber premise may be connected to each other via an in-home network technology such as MoCA (multimedia over coax alliance), IP (Internet protocol), Ethernet, and others, and each of the CPE devices within the subscriber premise may be connected to one or more upstream networks such as a MSO (multiple-systems operator) network.
CPE devices may periodically receive updates, data objects, or other communications from a MSO server. For example, each CPE device may download an update, code object (e.g., firmware, application, data objects, etc.) from a MSO server. A download may be delivered to a CPE device through a pull or push based mechanism (e.g., gateway image loader (GIL), DCT based code download, DSM-CC, unicast, multicast, or other standard-based download). A download may targeted to each CPE device within a subscriber premise individually.
However, the download process utilized by MSOs has various inefficiencies. For example, a MSO generally spins/carousels code and data object(s) throughout an associated network which consumes the bandwidth within the network and the bandwidth within an in-home network. Further all of the CPE devices within a subscriber premise are forced to process download messages. If a download is targeted via in-band QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) channel, then utilization of STB resources and QAM channel is increased. Also, a STB may suffer an outage when tuning to a QAM channel in an effort to download code and data objects. Moreover, a MSO may be unable to determine whether all CPE devices within a subscriber premise have successfully received a download. For example, when a CPE device is powered down or otherwise absent from a network, a MSO may not receive an acknowledgement of a successful download by the CPE device. In some instances, one or more CPE devices within a subscriber device may successfully receive a download while one or more other CPE devices within the subscriber premise may fail to receive the download, and in these instances, the CPE devices within the subscriber premise may face inter-operability issues and/or may fail to provide certain functions or features. With each CPE device within a subscriber premise retrieving a download through a unicast or multicast session, bandwidth utilization may be increased when the download is individually delivered to each of the CPE devices.
Therefore, a need exists for improving methods and systems for delivering a download to multiple CPE devices within a subscriber premise.
Like reference numbers and designations in the various drawings indicate like elements.